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a corrupt flash drive somehow caused loss of my data partitions, and this in turn caused both Acronis and Reflect to fail to restore a bootable system partition

That interests me.

Can you provide details on why the loss of a data partition would cause Acronis and Macrium to fail to restore?

I assume the image files were not stored on the lost data partition. Or were they? In which case, I do understand.

Only wish I could! For years I always ignored the regular advice on Acronis to image the entire drive rather than just the OS partition but this incident, or shock rather, has me wondering just how safe system only images really are, and it's one of the reasons I decided it was time to get a small SSD system so no partitioning of the OS drive would be necessary. And no, the images were not on the same drive of course.

a corrupt flash drive somehow caused loss of my data partitions, and this in turn caused both Acronis and Reflect to fail to restore a bootable system partition

That interests me.

Can you provide details on why the loss of a data partition would cause Acronis and Macrium to fail to restore?

I didn't explain this properly at all so I'll have another go. It seems that in messing around trying to get this flash to format, somehow my HDD partition table got damaged and the extended logical partition holding my data partitions just disappeared. I didn't know that this had happened until I rebooted, when my user profile failed to load after login. I managed to recover the lost partitions with Partition Wizard but it still would not boot to my desktop so I had little option but to restore my last Win 7 system image, first with Acronis and then with Reflect. Both booted OK but failed to load my desktop so I had to assume that somehow the registry links that associate your user profile with with your initial login were no longer valid.

My new machine had arrived meantime so I spent a day or two on that while debating what to do about the Medion. I decided to have one last go at recovery before reinstalling 7 and went back to a two month old Acronis image more in hope than expectation and bingo - it booted straight to my desktop.

So it was that salutary experience that convinced me that moving your user profile to another drive was not on unless you intend including both drives in your images, which I don't want to do, but the Win 7 Libraries offer a simple solution to the problem.

SSDs, HDDs and RAMdrives

What components make enterprise HDDs more reliable than consumer HDDs?Been googling around for info and haven't been able to pinpoint exactly what makes a enterprise drive more reliable than consumer drives.
I understand consumer demand for bigger drives at lower cost so manufacturers have to cut corners somewhere along the line. What/Where exactly are they...

Hardware & Devices

SSDs and HDDs and defrag.OK. My SSD died, so I had to swap in a standard HDD while waiting for the new drive to arrive. I did a new install of the OS, and set up everything as if I had the SSD in the system.
I have three HDDs in the machine, and only one will be swapped to SSD in the near future, so I did not disable...

Performance & Maintenance

Choose between 2 new SSDs.I just bought a new ultrabook...an HP Envy 4t. I'm looking for a thin 7mm SSD to put in it, and I've narrowed my choices down to 2. I understand one comes with a data transfer kit and one doesn't, and there's a slight difference in capacity. That being said, and "stated drive performance...

Hardware & Devices

Think you know SSDs? Think again.Read the entire (long!) article over at AnandTech: The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ
Also, per fakeasdf in the post http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/6203-think-you-know-ssds-think-again-5.html#post265077 be sure to read the followup.
Here is a snippet:
...

Hardware & Devices

The Truth About SSDsThe following are my views based on my own research. Sensible comments and discussion are welcomed.
The truth about SSDs
Pros
•Increased start up speed
•Increased application/game launching
•File fragmentation is negligible
•Consistent read rates
•Silent

Hardware & Devices

SSDsSSD's intrigue the hell out of me. i just read this article The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News and now im not so sure I want to get one.
i would use it for my OS and programs only, i already have a 1TB drive for...